Hunter Valley is a beautiful vineyard located next to the town of Cessnock. Or should I say Cessnock is located inside Hunter Valley.

And the main spot is called Lovedale.

Locating Lillians took a bit of effort, we came from the south of the map and headed north. It's located in the 5th column 5th row in the map. Can you find it?

We were pretty excited as we drove up the estate house in the middle of a vast empty land (3-4 acres?).

The house from the driveway already looked pretty promising.

Soon we were at the front porch moving our luggage into the house from the car.

Due to my personal request for a specific dessert wine that I've heard so much about, Bill from Allandale winery (from next door) specially had someone hand-delivered a bottle of Anna Semillon Sauvignon Blanc to our door step just as the evening arrives.

The wine was awarded wine of the year in some competition btw, just to prove my point of how lovely this wine was. :p

We chucked the bottle into the fridge to chill and drove out to a nearby boutique restaurant to have our first wine dining.

Out of excitement, I forgot to bring my camera out. We've chosen Mojo's to have our first dinner in Hunter, a local recommendation.

photo taken from the site.

The dinner cost us almost AUD80 per person, with wine. Not a full three course meal as we're not exactly big eater, but you get the rough idea. Nothing fancy is cheap.

Mojo's was absolutely lovely. I especially adore their cameralised balsamic vinegar they served with their Hunter's own olive oil which you usually dip with home made fresh dinner roll/bread. I even bought the bottle of vinegar and now it's sitting half bottle consumed in my fridge.

That night we got home and took the bottle of Semillon Sauvignon Blanc out and went backyard to spend the rest of our night chatting in the cold winter drizzles.

Nothing beats a lovelier evening. Everything was perfect. If only Kif and I were single back then, damn it. *Potong steam* (kidding :p)

We went to bed separately as the night drew in. But not before placing the frozen croissants on the tray in the kitchen for the next day.

Morning came...

I took the chance to use the beautiful jacuzzi in my bathroom. Ho ho ho...

It got cold so I borrowed a jumper from Kif and pulled it over myself. Brrr....

Morning in Lillians was perfect. The fresh air, the cold quiet lounge, unwashed wine glass on the table. It's something I wouldn't mind waking up to every morning for the rest of my life. We even spotted a few wallabies hopping around the fences out of the kitchen window.

Things got more "homey" when we went to check out our croissants on the table.

It's raised to perfection.

So we stuck the two loaves into the oven and proceeded with our morning hang abouts.

There, our perfect croissants, with butter, for breakfast.

Before and after

After changing, we drove out to explore the rest of Hunter Valley.

Okay, one thing beautiful about living in Lillians or in a vineyard, is that you wake up to a scenery like this every morning.